Hype and Hypersexuality: Kara Walker, Her Work and Controversy Erikka Juliette Searles
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Art and Design Theses Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design 12-6-2006 Hype and Hypersexuality: Kara Walker, Her Work and Controversy Erikka Juliette Searles Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/art_design_theses Recommended Citation Searles, Erikka Juliette, "Hype and Hypersexuality: Kara Walker, Her Work and Controversy." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2006. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/art_design_theses/13 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Art and Design Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HYPE AND HYPERSEXUALITY: KARA WALKER, HER WORK AND CONTROVERSY by ERIKKA J. SEARLES Under the Direction of Susan Richmond ABSTRACT Kara Walker, winner of the MacArthur “Genius” award and the Smithsonian Lucelia award, is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary African American artists. Her work, especially her cut-paper silhouettes depicting grotesque antebellum scenes, has inspired as much outrage from an older generation of Black artists as acclaim from the mainstream media. This thesis gives an overview of the artist’s life, analysis of some of her works, and an examination of the controversy her work has caused. In the conclusion, I introduce the next generation of Black American artists, self-proclaimed “Art Stars,” including Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou. INDEX WORDS: Kara Walker, Silhouettes, Civil War Imagery, Black Women, Art, Critics, Positive and Negative Stereotyping HYPE AND HYPERSEXUALITY: KARA WALKER, HER WORK AND CONTROVERSY by ERIKKA J. SEARLES A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2006 Copyright by Erikka Juliette Searles 2006 HYPE AND HYPERSEXUALITY: KARA WALKER, HER WORK AND CONTROVERSY by ERIKKA J. SEARLES Major Professor: Susan Richmond Committee: Melinda Hartwig Cheryl Goldsleger Electronic Version Approved Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University December 2006 iv DEDICATION Hype & Hypersexuality is written in memory of Dr. Thomasine Bradford. I hope to one day become a fraction of the feminist and scholar she was. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project has been four years in the making. I would be remiss not to thank all of the scholars and professors that have assisted me in this process, especially Dr. Nicole Hood for helping me begin the thesis stage and Dr. Susan Richmond for helping me complete it. I would also like to thank Cheryl Goldsleger, Karen Pierce, Dr. Melinda Hartwig, Dr. Emily Hanna, Dr. Florencia Bazzano-Nelson, and Dr. Glenn Gunhouse for all of their assistance. I would like to thank all of my family for their prayers and support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.....................................v TABLE OF FIGURES...................................vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION.......................................1 2 THE ARTIST.........................................2 Life.................................................2 Process..............................................4 Formal analysis of Why I Like White Boys.............9 3 THE WORK..........................................12 Complexity of Subject Matter........................12 Picturing the Negress: Black Feminist Analysis of Figures........................................17 4 THE CONTROVERSY...................................23 Rewriting History: Kara Walker’s Imaginary Plantations vs. Slave Reality.............28 Critics and Controversy........................32 Positive and Negative Stereotyping.............33 Post Black Art?................................35 5 CONCLUSION........................................38 vii BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................41 TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1. Burn 1997. Cut paper......................43 Figure 2. Why I Like White Boys. Cut paper..........44 Figure 3. The End of Uncle Tom (Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven)and Detail 1995. Cut paper..................45 Figure 4. Gone: An Historical Romance of Civil War As It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart 1994. Cut paper ....................................46 Figure 5. Untitled 1998. Watercolor.................47 Figure 6. African’t 1996. Cut paper.................48 Figure 7. Consume 1998. Cut paper...................49 1 Hype and Hypersexuality: Kara Walker, Her Work, and Controversy Preface In the summer of 2002 in the midst of the National Black Arts Festival, I found myself at the Georgia State University School of Art and Design Gallery exhibition entitled Looking Forward, Looking Black. Though I found the entire body of exhibited work interesting, the outstanding work in my opinion was Burn (Figure 1) a black cut-paper silhouette of a Black woman, engulfed in flames, with smoke billowing around her, lying flat against the stark white wall. This was by no means one of artist Kara Walker’s sensational, titillating works. It was not, as is usually the case in this artist’s work, dripping with sexuality nor did it overtly take on issues of race. It was simply a beautiful piece of fantasy or nightmare and so captivated was I by the sheer skill of the artist’s hand in creating a drawing with scissors that I began to research the artist. But I found that there was so much more to Kara Walker than the beauty of her silhouettes: there was 2 actually some substance, some racial and social commentary, and most exciting to me, she was a master at using shock effect to make her point. Her work was everything I thought art should be. Later I discovered her ties to Atlanta and this only intrigued me further. I knew that I would study this artist in great detail and the result is the following volume. Introduction “Stealing Black culture- or Black bodies is maybe one flawed cultures attempt at redemption, silently acknowledging Black power- the power of subversion- oooh- but this is just an idea and its only a drawing after all, it has no real power… --- Kara” Text from Untitled 1998. Part of the following work examines the life of the artist and how her life experience informs her work. The largest and central part of this work will show that critics on both sides of the issue are responsible for the huge amount of acclaim that Walker has received. A close examination of Walker’s work especially her black paper cutout silhouettes from the late nineties and early 2000’s follows, and I also examine the controversy her work has produced. Walker receives a wide range of responses, from 3 critical acclaim from the mainstream “White” art world to public outrage from some members of the Black community. Walker’s work is visually black and white. The artist delights in both extremes, such as critics’ love or hate reactions to her work but also in the gray areas. The viewer is at once attracted to and repelled by her work. The Artist Life Kara Walker was born November 26, 1969 in Stockton, CA. Walker earned a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and a MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her first exhibition was in 1991 in Atlanta. In 1997, at the age of 27, she became the youngest–ever recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, often referred to as the “Genius Award.” She continues to garner acclaim, winning the Lucelia Award from the Smithsonian in 2004. The Lucelia Artist Award, established in 2001, annually recognizes an American artist under the age of fifty who demonstrates exceptional creativity and has produced a significant body of artwork that is considered emblematic of the new century’s period in contemporary art. 4 I am interested in the motivation for Walker’s great critical acclaim and will examine this further in the final section of this work. Process Walker’s signature and most celebrated work consists of life-size silhouettes cut out of black paper, glued or pinned on a contrasting white wall. The method of paper-cutting she uses is rooted in a “traditional Swiss- German technique called Scherenschnitte, which was brought to the United States by the Pennsylvania-Dutch.” She plays with the irony that this cut paper silhouette medium found popularity among “nineteenth century genteel Southern ‘ladies.”1 Like generations of women before her, which not coincidentally included skilled black women by the nineteenth century, Walker draws in white chalk on the reverse side of the paper and then cuts.2 Many of these 1 Elizabeth Janus, “As American As Apple Pie,” Parkett no. 59 (2000), 139. 2 Anne M. Wagner, “The Black- White Relation,” Narratives of a Negress (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 93 5 “cutters” unlike Walker remained anonymous, a characteristic of this silhouette work being considered more craft than “art.” In Walker’s large-scale installations, she builds on the tradition of cut paper silhouette. The artist commented on the large scale of her panoramic silhouettes in an interview with curator Thelma Golden: “That’s why the cutout installation remains interesting to me. …[t]hey are large and consuming, intellectually and physically.”3 The viewer is overwhelmed not only by the subject matter but the gigantic imposing “shadows” cast by the “historical” figures. The process and medium the artist chooses is important because Walker delights in the contradiction